A Crime Of Compassion

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorCollege, Undergraduate July 2001

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Sometimes there are situations in life that make people think about death. Everyone is going to die one day but what if that person wants to end his life earlier. Should anyone be allowed to decide about his own life in any bad situation? I can't answer that but instead I'll explain a specific situation when death should be acceptable. I never thought about death as a way to solve a problem but when I read "A crime of Compassion"� by Huttmann , I changed my mind. A terminally ill ends a life of a person who suffered for 6 months and was resuscitated fifty two times in one month. Terminally ill should be a reason to accept whether the person wants to be alive or just die and stop suffering. Only the patient must have right to decide about his own life not even his family has the right to decide for him.

Mac was a patient in the story "A crime for compassion"� who wanted to die and stop the pain but doctors weren't allowed to just let him die.

Only someone suffering a terminally ill could explain how painful is to see his own life getting away and there is nothing to bring it back. It is difficult to let someone die even though there is nothing that can change that. When someone is dying, people wants to do anything to help that person but sometimes instead of help him they make it worse. Sometimes Doctors try to do his best but the best for who? If a patient like Mac is suffering a pain that not even Doctors or the advanced technology can alleviate that pain , why make it longer? Why makes a patient suffer more? .Mac just wanted to be in peace and stop the pain. Doctors should understand that it was out of their hands and in this case only the patient should determine what to do with his life.

Not only the patient but also the family suffers every single minute in this situation. It's hard to imagine a member of the family getting weaker every day and not even doctors or technology are good enough to get him back. Even though the family is the closest people, they should not be allowed to decide for the patient. None should be allowed to decide for someone else"˜s life. Only a conscious patient should sign or ask for that called "no-code" order. It means not to resuscitate a patient who stopped breathing. When a patient is in coma or unconscious, Doctors must work hard to keep him alive because doctors don't know what the patient wants to do. Mac begs the Doctors for just let him die because he was under so much pain and he knows that his family was suffering too. Mac wanted his family remembered him as the wealthy guy he used to be.

There are million of people working hard to make technology better everyday but technology can not solve everything or at least not yet. Technology is saving a lot of lives every minute. In the story, Mac wasn't alive at all. Mac had tubes attached to his body to make him breath. He already was a dead body. He was designated by God to stay like that for the rest of his life. In this case not even technology or human being "˜s knowledge was able to give his life back. It is possible that in a couple of years or months later technology could do the miracle but there was nothing at that moment that could make Mac think about a cure. Doctors have the obligation to prolong patient's life but in this case it wasn't life at all. Doctors were just prolonging his pain and playing with his life.